CHAPTER XIV
WORDS THAT SING
To seal their pact of palship Lavender took Sidney to Top Notch.
He led her over a little path that wound around the smaller sand dunesdirectly behind Sunset Lane until they came to a clump of old willows.Once a cottage had stood under the willows; its timbers and crumblingbricks still lay about half buried in the sand and covered over withmoss and climbing weeds. Though not a quarter of a mile from AuntAchsa's the spot offered as complete solitude as though it had been atthe ends of the world. The only sounds that reached its quiet were thefar-off screaming of the seagulls as they fought for their food at lowtide, and the distant boom-boom of the surging sea on the beach of thebackside.
"Look up there!" commanded Lavender proudly. And Sidney, looking as hehad bidden her, gave a little cry of delight. For there among the greatlimbs of the biggest of the willows was a tiny house.
"That's mine. Top Notch. Mr. Dugald built it. That's where I study."
"Why, it's the cutest thing I ever _saw_!" Sidney was already at thebottom of the narrow ladder that led to the house. "Can I go up? I feeljust like Alice in Wonderland, as though I'd have to take a pill to getsmall enough to squeeze in."
"Oh, no, you won't. It's big enough for two."
The structure had been cleverly contrived; plankings securely nailed tothe spreading branches gave indeed ample space for two and even more;there were comfortable seats and wide unshuttered windows, a roughtable and a secret shelf that looked like part of the wall until oneunlocked and let down a little door and revealed a neat row of books. A"wing" of the house, added to another branch, Sidney declared, was"upstairs."
Sidney sat down on one of the seats and Lavender sat on the other.
"Why, this is the best _yet_!" Sidney cried with a long breath. "Idon't see how Mr. Dugald thinks of the nice things he does."
"He's the best sort that ever lived." Lavender asserted with a littlebreak in his voice. "I don't know why he bothers 'bout me. But he foundout that I came over here and sort o' camped among those ruins downthere and I used to hide my things in that old oven so's Aunt Achsawouldn't find them. He knew why, too. Y'see it bothers Aunt Achsa a lotto have me want to read and study so much--she's afraid I'll get tothinkin' of going away. She don't know, y'see, that I _am_ going, someday. So then Mr. Dugald helped me build Top Notch. There are all mybooks."
Sidney ran her eye over the different volumes; among them were storiesof seafaring adventure and books on travel and science, a dictionary, aBible--and a volume of Browning's poetry. Sidney's hand shot out towardthis last, then quickly dropped to her side.
Lavender saw the gesture. "I like poetry," he explained shyly. "I'mkinda afraid of it--I mean I don't understand it and I wish I did. Mr.Dugald says he don't, either. But there's something about the waypoetry goes that's like music--it makes a sound. It's like the ocean,moving and beating, and kind o' like your heart. And sometimes thewords hurt, they're so beautiful. I wish I knew more about poetry."
Sidney felt shivery cold all over and hot at the same moment. She kepther eyes on the square that was the open window. She knew she ought totell the truth to Lavender--right now. But, oh, she _couldn't_. Yet shemust! She had almost summoned the right words to begin when Lavenderrose and stepped toward the ladder.
"I brought you here so's you'd know 'bout it and use it when you wantto--the books'n everythin'. Only don't let Mart come. She'd make fun ofit. Here's where I hide the key to the shelf. S'long. I got to get downto Rockman's." Lavender abruptly slipped down the ladder and ran out ofsight among the dunes.
Left alone in the Top Notch Sidney felt a guilty remorse sweep overher. Lavender had shared with her his sanctum sanctorum, he hadadmitted his love of poetry and she had sat silent and had not told himthe truth.
Like music--like the waves of the ocean beating--like one'sheart--words that hurt, his shy sentences rang in her ears. Probably hehad found it hard to tell her for fear she might laugh. Laugh--why,suddenly she knew that that was really the way poetry seemed to her!She just _made_ herself believe she hated it when she did not hate itat all. Music--she could hear Isolde's soft drawling voice reading fromone of father's books and it was indeed music. She had all thattreasure that she could share with Lavender, hungry for the beautiful,and yet she had sat mum. Oh, she had been horrid, stingy. And he wassharing Top Notch with her.
Quite naturally Sidney, brooding secretly over her shortcomings, fellback upon the long-neglected "Dorothea." And she took "Dorothea" atonce to Top Notch, the better to pour out her feelings undisturbed. Shecovered a whole page with her appreciation of Lavender's confidence andher utter unworthiness of such tribute. Then the fascination of TopNotch brought her to Mr. Dugald.
"I wish the girls knew him. He's so much nicer than any of theirsuitors, than even any of Vick's." Let it be recorded here that Sidneypaused and chewed her pencil and pondered the difficulties of bringingabout an acquaintance between Mr. Dugald and any one of her threesisters. Romance was never far from Sidney's imaginings; she invariablyendowed every young man who came to the Romley house for any sort of areason with deep purposes of wooing. But this situation offeredobstacles to even Sidney's imagination for miles separated Mr. Dugaldfrom the charms of her sisters; there seemed no way in which he couldmeet them.
However, obstacles only stimulated Sidney. "I know," she wrotefuriously, "I'll pick out one of them and talk about her all the timeand wish and wish in my heart and just _make_ something happen. Now,which one, dear Dorothea, is the important thing for me to decide."
From point of romance Vick offered the most possibilities--there was somuch about Vick to talk about. But Mr. Dugald did not seem Vick's sort.Vick liked what she called "smooth" men and Mr. Dugald was mostcertainly not that. And, anyway, Vick would simply have to have a richman to give her all the things she said she intended having and Mr.Dugald was not rich or he'd have more fashionable clothes. No, Vick wasout of it. Isolde--well, he wasn't Issy's sort, either. Sidney did notknow just what Issy's sort was like but she did not think it was likeMr. Dugald. Anyway, she did not _want_ Issy to have him. She wantedTrude to have him, dear old peachy Trude who had never had any beauexcept her Lost Love.
"I shall talk about dear Trude and all her nice points. I shall evensay she is beautiful for she is in the eyes of love and I like to talkabout Trude, anyway. So from this day forth I shall gather the threadsof Destiny into my white hands and weave a beautiful pattern of loveand happiness."
Forthwith Sidney began her weaving and found it amazingly easy. Shetalked through supper about Trude and took it as a promising sign thatMr. Dugald himself asked her all sorts of questions as though he"thirsted" to know more. And Sidney answered generously. She walkedwith him after supper to the postoffice in order to talk more aboutTrude. The next day she produced a very unflattering snapshot of Trudeand left it on the kitchen table and later gloated in secret over itsdisappearance, though of course Aunt Achsa _might_ have burned it up inher tireless cleaning and straightening.
After that Trude's name crossed the conversation of the little familyfrequently and quite naturally. Mr. Dugald called her "Truda" and knewthat she was staying with the Whites on Long Island and that she wasthe prop of the entire Romley family and never thought of herself atall and that she wasn't as pretty as Vick or Isolde but really,_nicer_--Sidney quite opened her heart. And then one morning when shewas helping Mr. Dugald clean his brushes she told him of Trude's LostLove. Not much about it for the reason that she herself knew only alittle and also because a strange look went suddenly over Mr. Dugald'sface.
"Put on the brakes, little sister. Aren't you letting me into secretsthat perhaps your Trude would not want me to know?"
Sidney's face flamed. She knew Mr. Dugald was right. "Oh, I _should_not have told you. I--just got started and didn't think. Can't youforget what I said as though I didn't say it?" she pleaded.
"I'll forget what you said," Mr. Dugald promis
ed, knowing perfectlywell that he could not and from that day on he never asked any morequestions of Sidney concerning her family.
"I'm not playing fair," he said to himself but not to her.
To "Dorothea" Sidney confided her chagrin. "I didn't say _much_--justthat Trude had had one heartbreaking affair with a man she met at Mrs.White's and that I didn't believe she'd gotten over it yet. I read abook once where it said pity was akin to love and I thought if Mr.Dugald _knew_ that Trude's heart was broken he would feel very sorryfor her. But he looked so embarrassed that I knew I had not beenmaidenly as Isolde would say and I blushed furiously. He promised toforget it and I think he will. But, oh, perhaps I have defeated my dearpurpose for now when I speak of Trude he looks funny as though he wasafraid of what I was going to say next. I am in despair."
The sound of voices, one unmistakably Mr. Dugald's, disturbed Sidney'smusings. She thrust "Dorothea" into the secret shelf and locked it.Then she peeped out of the window.
Mr. Dugald and Miss Letty Vine approached down the narrow path of hardsand straight toward the willows. Sidney's first impulse was to call tothem; in the next moment she realized that they had no intention ofclimbing to Top Notch. Miss Vine wore heavy gloves on her hands andcarried a trowel and a basket and was making little jumps here andthere among the weeds in search of "specimens."
Sidney sat very still and watched her. She thought Miss Letty the mostinteresting person, anyway. She always looked like the figurehead of aship come to life, as Mr. Dugald had described her. She was very talland bony, with huge bones that made lumps in her shoulders and elbowsand even at her knees; her temples protruded and her cheek-bones andher jaw. She had long fingers with prominent knuckles.
Miss Letty always wore a style of dress that she had evolved forherself long ago and that was plainly built for comfort rather thanstyle or beauty. She held any grace of trimming as "froppery" andscorned it, going always unadorned. She wore her "learning" just as shewore her clothes. That she had gone to school in Boston and studiedmusic there no one would ever know from anything she said. One justthought of Miss Letty as being _born_ with knowledge, the way she wasborn capable. "Capable from the cradle," Aunt Achsa sometimes said.
Everyone liked Miss Letty in spite of the bones and the sharp tongueand the freakish dresses, and no one knew exactly why; it might havebeen her eyes which were kindly and had little twinkles deep-set withintheir irises, or her way of knowing the thing to do and going ahead anddoing it. Everyone respected Miss Letty and acknowledged her worth atonce.
Now Mr. Dugald was lounging against one of the rotting timbers of thehouse-that-had-been and sketching Miss Letty on the pad which he alwayscarried in the pocket of his old coat. _He_ thought Miss Letty mostinteresting, too. He spent considerable time at her house and oftentook long walks with her.
While Sidney watched, Miss Letty sat down stiffly by Mr. Dugald's sideand looked with interest at the sketch.
"That's about the thousandth one you've made, isn't it? And you can'tseem to get any of them bad enough."
"I can't get into it what I want," Dugald Allan laughed, tearing offthe sheet and crumpling it in his hand. "You see I feel something aboutyou that I haven't been able yet to put on canvas. But I will some day.Then I'll know I have gotten somewhere."
Miss Letty considered his words as though they were of some one quiteapart from herself.
"I suppose it's my soul you're hoping to catch. Well, I never did wearit on my sleeve," and she laughed, a great laugh like a man's.
"No, you do not. That's true. But it's my job to get at people's souls,wherever they wear 'em, and paint them in."
"Well, hunt, then. Souls are queer things," opined Miss Letty,carefully drawing off her old gloves and smoothing them out with herlong, bony fingers. "I sometimes think the Lord gets the souls mixed upand puts them in the wrong bodies. Maybe that's wicked but if 'tis Ithink lots wickeder things."
"Maybe He knows more about it than we think He does--" said Dugald sosoftly that Sidney, frankly eavesdropping, had hard work to catch thewords. They were so interesting, these two, that she was glad she hadnot let them know she was in Top Notch; she hoped they would talk along time about souls and such things. But without warning Miss Lettychanged the subject.
"Did you ever know such a smart piece as that girl of Achsy Green's?"
"Sidney?" And Mr. Dugald chuckled. "She's sure one rare kid. I don'tknow when I've enjoyed anything as much as having her around. And doyou know the youngster's rarely gifted--she has a colorful imaginationand a perception of verities that may take her further than her father.She is fighting destiny just now, but it will get her; if she isn't apoet she'll be a creator of something equally fine."
"I'm too old to live to know--but you will," answered Miss Letty, quitecalmly. "And maybe we're both wrong. Maybe her finest work will be toraise a family. And I don't know, when all's said and done, but that'sas good a job as your daubs or my music or a book of verse. You've gotsomething then that can love you back."
But Sidney did not hear this simple philosophy for she had dropped tothe floor of Top Notch and covered her ears with her hands. Her faceflamed with the anger that held her. How _dared_ they sit there andtalk her over! And say that she was going to write poetry! That she hadsomething or other and might be greater than her father! A poet! Well,she _wouldn't_! _She would not!_ She thought, with stinginghumiliation, of the verses she had written in her attic den and thatlay now hidden in the secret place under the floor. She'd written themjust because they hummed so in her ears that she had _had_ to writethem, but when she returned home she'd tear them into tiny bits andnever, _never_ write another line, even though the words did jingle andhum.
She sat cramped on the floor of Top Notch, until she was certain theintruders had gone away. Then she got stiffly to her feet and reachedfor "Dorothea." Hot tears of mortification blinded her eyes so that shehad to dash them away with the back of her hand. One splashed upon thepage she had opened.
"I have come, dear Dorothea, to another crossroad in life. You onlyshall witness my solemn vow. _I shall not be a poet!_ I shall be amissionary. A missionary's life is fraught with danger and takes themto distant climes and they have to dress in what is given to them outof a barrel--"
She felt a little better and pleasantly sacrificial after she hadwritten this vow. Poor Sidney, she did not know that the words thatLavender had likened to music and the beating sea would sing in herears as persistently in Timbuctoo as in the quiet of her attic den!